The Chouans

driven
out by a conflagration. But the period and the region in which they
were gave an altogether different interest to this body of men. Any
one initiated into the secrets of the civil discords which were then
agitating the whole of France could easily have distinguished the few
individuals on whose fidelity the Republic might count among these
groups, almost entirely made up of men who four years earlier were at
war with her.

One other and rather noticeable sign left no doubt upon the opinions
which divided the detachment. The Republicans alone marched with an
air of gaiety. As to the other individuals of the troop, if their
clothes showed marked differences, their faces at least and their
attitudes wore a uniform expression of ill-fortune. Citizens and
peasantry, their faces all bore the imprint of deepest melancholy;
their silence had something sullen in it; they all seemed crushed
under the yoke of a single thought, terrible no doubt but carefully
concealed, for their faces were impenetrable, the slo